Darfur

This morning my alarm, set to our local NPR station, blared at 7:30 am, and as I slowly emerged from my morning stupor and the consciousness began to flow, I found myself listening to an interview with Conductor George Matthew of Carnegie Hall. He was discussing the parallels between Verdi’s Requiem and the genocide in Darfur, the show playing clips of music that my mind instantly put to eerie scenery he described. Apparently top-notch musicians in New York area banded together recently to play this music to raise awareness of Darfur and the millions of people affected.

Having played the piano for many years, I always found the exercise intriguing—utilizing imagination to enhance the meaning of a musical piece. While I would do this at my piano teacher’s urgings and arrive at scenes that echoed my personality or current mood, this morning’s foray into the imagination was jarring, the dark music mirroring the untold horrors of living in constant fear. Jarring in that we allow ourselves to live so peacefully while such things are happening elsewhere to other innocent human beings.

The exercise inevitably aroused existential questions of why I am here and not there. We’ve all had these reflexive musings of purpose and destiny and why our consciousnesses were so lucky as to end up in these bodies in this, the richest country on Earth. Such questions, though not germane to solving the crisis, underscore the urgency to find a solution: Those are real people dying. The world has an obligation to end this conflict. As the world superpower, we should lead by example and be the first to commit to ending this by whatever means necessary. Estimated dead range from a conservative 50,000 to 500,000. The Washington Post cites 2.5 million displaced. It took much prodding for our government to come forward and call this genocide, but the UN has still refused to do so.

We should do more. We owe it to humanity. The cost of doing nothing is too great in light of even a single life lost.

For those that have it, Verdi’s Requiem truly does wake your soul to the true magnitude of the human plight in Darfur. I listened to it twice today, and you should too, if only to remind yourself of another world far away where people are hurting every day.